It was school holidays and in my usual unprepared way, I was not arranging childcare options for the first week until the Sunday night!😬 We don’t have any family in Toowoomba and I don’t like to feel as if I am putting upon my friends, even though they assure me that I’m not! I try to implement a rotation system so that I’m not targeting the same friends all the time, so I only ask if I’m desperate!🙏🏻

I didn’t really have anyone for the Monday, so had to take Mia to work with me!😬 I had an entire bag FULL of tricks for her, but she found it much more interesting to go around the office disturbing every single one of my colleagues!😳 They assured me they didn’t mind, but I am 99% positive they were just being polite! My colleague, Amy, appeared to cop the worst, as she allowed Mia to give her a felt-tip tattoo sleeve!😬 It makes for a funny photo, but it cemented my decision not to bring her back to work again for a prolonged period!🙈

Luckily my amazing friends took Mia for play dates for the rest of the holidays so I was pretty lucky!🥰 She had asked to go to the special free trampolines in Grand Central, so I took her one afternoon straight after I picked her up. In order to get to the trampolines, we had to go down an escalator and “meltdown” is a tame description of what Mia did. She was not getting on it and was screaming her lungs out just to draw that extra bit of attention to us!🙈 I’m all for facing fears and getting her to just give things a try, which I attempted to implement for the first 20 minutes. Then I tried bribery, by saying that in order to go on the trampoline, she had to first go on the escalator, which brought her closer, but still nope! Then we saw one of our Mum friends, who also tried to coax her on, but she’s a stubborn little devil and was having none of it! After I had admitted defeat and walked the long way round to the lifts, she then proceeded to bounce quite happily and very high on the trampoline, so I struggle to see the logic between being petrified of one thing and quite content with the other! Any ideas?! Mumlife – a complete guessing game!🤷🏼‍♀️

In good news, I actually won the points challenge at Zumba! (With a record number of points may I add! Toot tooting my horn!)🎉 So it completely validated me going to every exercise class under the sun and going up on stage to embarrass myself in order to gain more credit!🙊😳 Even better, Dani won the weight loss challenge so we were two smug exercise buddies!😏

I do like a good dress-up opportunity! (I lost the ability to feel much embarrassment at all years ago, although I sometimes get a slight twinge, which I quickly cover up with a laugh and think “Sod it!”😜) Life can be grim enough, without having to bother what other people think all the time! I wish I could have given my teenage self these words of wisdom, as teenage Emma spent far too much time caring what teenage boys and “popular” girls thought. The ironic part is that I wouldn’t want to look twice at those teenage boys I cared so much about now and the popular girls are…no better than anyone else now either (and in some cases that’s being liberal!🙊)

Anyway, as with buses, all the best fancy dress occasions seem to come at once and I ended up with a bonanza of my 100th parkrun and an Alice in Wonderland event on the same Saturday! I really didn’t mean to purchase outfits for both events, but I had decided that I should go as a superhero for my 100th parkrun, because I felt pretty damn super! Then Mia wanted to dress up the same and who says no to a 5 year old wanting to be just like you?!🤷🏼‍♀️ Supergirl was the only one with outfits in both sizes so matching Supergirls we were! Then I was told that Spotlight had cheap Alice in Wonderland kids costumes, so popped along and Mia spied the adult version and begged me to get it with those eyes!🥺 So I did and tried it on, with the impression that I was going to look like a bad porno version! Why do they have to make the adult versions so sexy?! I just wanted a nice Mum version of Alice, but it was very short and had stockings!😳 Ian said it was fine, but quite frankly, I didn’t trust his judgement, because he would most probably happily welcome “Porno Alice” over for a tea party!😅

Saturday came and because my 100th parkrun had coincided with the launch of a new parkrun in South Toowoomba, we had decided to go there, as had the news crew for Channel 7! I got called out to the front for a photo and next minute, the reporter was shoving a microphone in my face!😳 I babbled on about it being fitting that my 100th parkrun coincided with the launch of South Toowoomba parkrun, while internally thinking “I’ve got no make up on! I bet my eye bags look horrendous! Where do I even look?! Down the lens or at him?!” so I ended up with weird, darty eyes when I watched it back, but at least they detracted from the eye-bags somewhat!🥴 He then asked me “How many runs have you done?” which meant he wasn’t actually paying attention to what I was saying anyway and threw me for a second! “ONE HUNDRED!” I slowly repeated! At least, I thought, they probably wouldn’t use it now, but they did. Just without the interviewer’s voice!🙈

Mia was a complete pain in the rear that morning and moaned practically the entire way round the course!🙄 “Why did you come if you didn’t want to run then, Mia?!” I asked her. “Because I wanted the cool outfit!” she replied.😎 I couldn’t actually fault that reason!

New course, new breakfast spot, we had decided. I had invited lots of our friends to join us and was very grateful to the ones who came to show their support. We have quite the little posse of parkrun friends now and we had reserved a huge table, but the service was so slow and I think they had completely underestimated how many people would turn up to the launch of a new parkrun so we were waiting for ages!😴 Ian had even made the effort to come and join us for the breakfast part, but waiting and Ian do not mix, so he transformed into Grumpy Husband again and was fittingly the villain to my superhero!😝

We quickly got home, showered and changed into our Alice costumes for the Alice in Wonderland family fun day! I got so many funny looks, but kids kept coming up to me and a professional photographer asked for pictures, so I think they might have thought I was actually part of it, rather than just a Mum dressing up to keep her daughter happy! My favourite bit was when a older lady came up to me and said “What time are they painting the roses red, dear?!” I had to admit I had no idea!🤣 The wind was a bit strong at times, which didn’t team well with the short skirt, so spent far too long pulling that down and tugging my stockings back up, as they kept rolling down! After about 40 minutes of that, I admitted defeat, whipped them off and put them in my handbag!🙃

I had also said I would go to support some friends who had stalls at the Health and Wellness Expo at the local shopping centre, so we just walked across as Alices – cue many more strange looks, because now we were completely out of context too!😅 Someone shouted “Nice outfit!” out of their car window, but luckily it turned out to be someone I knew!😌 There were actually way too many people around that I happened to know which gave me more embarrassing twinges at the time, but I just kept the “embrace the crazy” mantra going round my head and explained to everyone at the Expo where we had come from, so that they didn’t think I just had a fancy dress fetish!😂

Mia worked the room and got freebies left, right and centre, but was serial popping the free balloons she was getting, so made a sharp exit!😬

I got home shattered and was just ready to chill when I got a message that next week’s Mums night out had been changed to that night instead! As much as I love a good night out, Ian and I had just decided to get a takeaway and drinks,so politely declined, also apologising for not making it to a park play date that afternoon…to be told that that was actually yesterday!!!🙄🙈 Clearly not a head for dates at the moment! Apologised profusely for being really shit!

I did the ordering and the driving to the takeaway on the proviso that Ian would jump out of the car to get it, as I had gone straight from Alice to PJs!

At the dinner table Mia told the following joke:

“Daddy, which tree doesn’t have leaves?”

“Um…(thinking)”

“It begins with “cunt!”

“Say whaaaaaat?!?!?”

(Looking confused at the (over)reaction) ” Yeah, country!”

Cue fits of laughter and relief from us! Mia just thought it was a really great joke fortunately!😅

As it turned out, practically the whole of Toowoomba appear to watch Channel 7 local news, as many of the staff and students at the schools I visit through work remarked at how they had seen me on TV, which was momentarily pretty embarrassing, until I laughed and thought “Sod it!” I will just “embrace the crazy” once again!😏

I had booked the second week of the holidays off to spend with Mia so tried to do all our errand-running on the first day in order to enjoy the rest of the week. I had read that a certain supplement was good for my situation (premature menopause), but couldn’t see it in the pharmacy, so asked an assistant a little coyly as it had a bit of an embarrassing name, only for them to shout “Hey, Jodie, do you know where the horny goat weed is?!?”😳 So, yes, I got some HORNY GOAT WEED!!!! I’ll let you know my verdict!

We collected Mia’s friend Elissa to take to the park on a play date and I let them run off and get rid of some energy as I was feeling really uncomfortable and it turned out I had started my period! Which doesn’t sound weird for normal people with a cycle, but I hadn’t had one for almost 12 months and had all but given up on ever having one again! Surely it couldn’t be the HORNY GOAT WEED having an effect already?!?!😲 Happy to go with any solution!

Was on a bit of a roll for freebies as won a $100 gift card for Boost juice and then my friend, Sophie, came through with free tickets to Toowoomba show which was becoming a bit of an annual escapade! Little did she know that I had already managed to bag myself free tickets by agreeing to do a Zumba class on stage!😳🤣 Yes, I know what you’re thinking, but I find it very hard to say no to things and felt like I should do it to be supportive, so I positioned myself towards the back and prayed I wouldn’t see anyone else that I knew! Dancing to “What does the fox say?”, gyrating in front of an audience mainly consisting of kids and Mia shouting “Mummy!” and pointing and waving at every opportunity severely tested my embarrassment threshold, as did the fact that I hadn’t practiced and was very rusty on the routines!🙈A few people I knew came and sat in the audience as their daughters were dancing after us and, quite honestly, an hour has never passed by quite so slowly!😒 But I got through it and had the rest of the day to relax and enjoy the show. Highlights were: Sharlise getting her ear nipped by a baby goat (photographic evidence supplied), quite possibly the weirdest puppet show known to man (the kids loved it!🙊) and the dirty but delicious Dagwood dogs. GH even joined us for a while but got cold, hungry and fed up of people so we all went home!🙄

At the end of the holidays, Mia and I went to sort our mops out. Mia played with the hairdresser training head, got braids and tried to dress up as Jojo…

I got re-blonded, went round to Cheree’s as the designated driver, got my make-up done and instantly wished I wasn’t the DD as I wanted to let loose with everyone else!😫 It’s funny how you can get in the mood as soon as you go out, isn’t it?! It’s a good job I was driving though, as someone forgot their ID and I had to take them all the way back again to get it! Good deed for the day done!✅ We had such a good night of 90s music, cocktails, bonding over Tinie Tempah and avoiding sleazy old men, but at least I didn’t have a hangover the next day!😏

I did have a Grumpy Husband though, who was annoyed because I hadn’t put the sausages in the freezer and they had gone off!?!? When I pointed out that he could have done that for himself, he said he doesn’t look at dates!🤷🏼‍♀️ I think someone was annoyed because Mummy had a night out personally and boy, it would have been a lot worse if I hadn’t have been the driver!

I was the driver once again on the Monday morning however, as Ian burst his tyre and I had to ferry him to work!😒 I also broke a chair just by sitting on it (not a great confidence-booster!🤨) so it wasn’t the best start to the week!😐

Mia went on a school trip to Darling Downs Zoo and it luckily coincided with my day off work so I could go too because why should she have all the fun!😜 I don’t necessarily know how much help I was as I kind of just veered off on my own agenda with one of the other Mums, but we had a great time!😅

Then a group of school Mums decided to go on our first night out and things got a bit messy! The end of the night was very blurry, but I know we all decided to go to a girls’ night for the Cancer Council and cash was being thrust into my hands!🙊 Can’t wait for the next one – hint, hint, ladies!🥂😉

I managed to flood the entire laundry on Anzac Day because I forgot to reattach the pipe I took out of the sink when I was hand-washing some clothes!🤦🏼‍♀️ It was a good job I had the public holiday to mop it all up and even gave myself blisters thanks to over-vigorous mopping! I think this is evidence that I shouldn’t be allowed to do housework of any sort, but think I would be met with another “sausage-date-gate” scenario, if I dared to suggest that!😝

An author came to Mia’s school and as she had been so good recently, I let her have a signed copy of the book and a photo where she is looking pretty star-struck! I had just turned around from paying when Mia’s teacher collared me to talk about Mia’s behaviour that day and how she had been in trouble for talking!!! “Why you little…”🤬

I ended up in a photo for the Chronicle after parkrun with the guy that had the heart attack the month previously, despite the fact that I had explained many times that I didn’t do anything! It was good to see him up and about though! Mia was in a better mood for it this weekend but thought she had lost her wristband halfway round, so we spent the entire second lap searching for it…only for it to turn up on the car floor later!🙄

I managed to score an amazing new TV on Facebook! We had never replaced the one which two year old Mia had broken through repeated bashing of the screen and work were getting rid of some cheaply so for $100 it was mine! I commented sold and was very happy! I got to work and the CEO had verbally agreed to give it to someone else! On a normal day I would have argued that I had commented “sold” before the verbal agreement, but instead I just burst into tears!😭

I’m sure that this seems like a total overreaction and on its own, it is, but 20 minutes earlier, a guy had driven into the back of my car so I was a bit shaken up! I was just sitting at the traffic lights minding my business and he just shunted me! As we were waiting to turn, I put his registration plate in my phone and then when the light turned and we went round the corner, I pulled over and he just kept driving!😲

I went to the police station to be told there was a 2 hour wait to see someone, so took Mia later after ballet and we were still there 90 minutes! 90 minutes is far too long to deflect questions about why certain people are wearing this and saying that and smelling a certain way, let me tell you! And if I have to repeat that experience (hopefully not!) it will be child-free! By the way, there are 109 grey tiles on the floor of Toowoomba police station – we counted them…several times!😫

It was about this time that GH spied a job advert for a new position near Cairns. “Apply for it!” I said, but didn’t mean at all!😬 I didn’t want to be the constant dream-crusher and I figured the chances of him getting it were fairly slim and we would cross that bridge when we came to it…

Anyway, I will leave that story for next time!